Word Clouds

Wordle is a toy for generating
“word clouds” from text that you provide. The clouds
give greater prominence to words that appear more frequently
in the source text. You can tweak your clouds with different
fonts, layouts, and color schemes.
The images you create with Wordle are yours
to use however you like. You can print them out, or save them
to your own desktop to use as you wish.

"Getting to Know You" Activity

Have students create a word cloud with words or phrases that describe themselves. (Certain word cloud tools will even let them put the cloud into a shape that represents them!) Afterwards, students can share their word cloud creation with peers and/or on a bulletin board.

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ELA: Synonyms

Create synonym word clouds and display around your classroom as a reference for students during writing. For instance, in my "nice" word cloud, I might include words like kind, friendly, good, agreeable, likable, amicable, etc.

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ELA: Character Analysis

Have students generate a cloud of words with character traits from a book they're reading. If you wanted this project to be a bit more involved, you could have students keep track of how many times a character trait is mentioned or referenced in a book and then generate a word cloud to see which traits are most prominent for that character. For instance, if a Cora Character displays three instances of being generous and one instance of being selfish, the child would create a word cloud where "generous" is entered 3 times and "selfish" is entered once. This might be a good visual way for students to see an overall picture of a character.

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Social Studies: Biography

Have students create a word cloud with words or phrases that describe the person they're studying. (Certain word cloud tools will even let them put the cloud into a shape that represents the person!) Afterwards, students can share their word cloud creation with peers and/or on a bulletin board.

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ELA: Writing Analysis

Students can copy and paste their story, essay, etc. into a word cloud generator to see which words they use the most. Afterwards, students may consider using a thesaurus to look up alternatives for words they use quite frequently.

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Science: Examples

Have students generate a themed word cloud of examples of a certain concept. For instance, students could generate a cloud with words such as water, lemonade, and soda for a liquid-themed cloud.

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Math: Examples

Have students generate a themed word cloud of examples of a certain concept. For instance, students could generate a cloud with words such as square, circle, oval, and triangle for a shape-themed cloud.

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Social Studies: Examples

Have students generate a themed word cloud of examples of a certain concept. For instance, students could generate a cloud with words such as Austin, Oklahoma City, and Springfield for a capital-themed cloud.

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ELA: Examples

Have students generate a themed word cloud of examples of a certain concept. For instance, students could generate a cloud with words such as quickly, furiously, and gracefully for an adverb-themed cloud.

Answer Garden does not require any sign up or login in order to use its website. Facilitators can enter a question or prompt and share the link to the audience. Participants are allowed to enter 20-40 character responses (depending on the settings the facilitator enabled); these responses form a word cloud where the answers that are given most frequently grow the largest.

While technically considered a formative assessment tool, one feature Poll Everywhere offers is to generate a word cloud from your audience.

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BOY: Class Climate or Rules Examples

At the beginning of the year, create an Answer Garden or Poll Everywhere word cloud by asking students to contribute words of their own. Students can submit "rule" ideas for the classroom, characteristics of how they think peers should treat each other, characteristics of what they're looking for in a teacher, or characteristics of the classroom climate. This could be a great beginning activity for students to see how similar their ideas are to their classmates and to provide a jumping point for classroom discussion.